Flagler Beach Reduces Its Lifeguard Zone By Two Towers, and Asks County for More Money

The new approach will “tighten up our lifeguard program and improve it,” Tom Gillin, the city’s parks and recreation director said in a presentation to the Flagler Beach City Commission Thursday evening, when the plan was announced somewhat incidentally, after a question from the audience.

“It’s a better situation for the city because it allows us to communicate where the guarded beach is, and that was part of the trade,” City Manager William Whitson said. He said it would yield “a good size saving that we’re going to be plowing into other projects and programs.” (The savings amount to the equivalent cost of fireworks on July 4, currently paid for by the countywide Tourist Development Council.)

Gillin oversees the city’s storied lifeguard crew. The narrower coverage zone was driven both by cost-savings and previous confusion with the zone, when swimmers and beach-goers would sometimes get confused as to how far north it extended.

The new coverage area is “boardwalk to boardwalk,” as city officials describe it–that is, parallel to the city’s boardwalk along State Road A1A, on both sides of the pier. There are six lifeguard towers from North 4th Street to South 8th Street.

Gillin’s crew will still have a mobile tower that can be put in place north of 4th Street whenever it gets too crowded there. While there will be fewer lifeguards on the beach, the crew itself will still total between 20 and 25 lifeguards, many of them part-timers, though instead of having 13 lifeguards on the beach every day for 90 days, with each lifeguard costing about $14 an hour (when all costs to the city are included), there’ll be 11. Lifeguards are paid $12 an hour. The city budgets about $240,000 for its lifeguard program, with about $130,000 of that earmarked for salaries. The city funds less than half of that amount. The county’s share this year is $84,150.




Despite the $25,000 saving, Whitson had another surprise: he is seeking more money from the county for the lifeguard program.

Whitson was answering a question from James Sherman, the only non-incumbent candidate in the March 8 election for the city commission (two seats are up, three are running). Sherman asked about the county’s share of the lifeguard cost. Whitson said the cost-share agreement was signed a while back. “Now the on-the-ground situation is shifting and changing faster and faster,” he said. “We’ve written a letter to the county asking for more money. But it’s a process we have to go through, and that’s why the beach count numbers are very important because what is happening is that more and more of the burden, the financial burden of picking up the trash and guarding the beaches and handling all of the police matters and all the other issues that come in with the beach, that cost burden is shifting to the local city. And we feel like that burden should be shared by the county and possibly even the state.” Oddly, there was no mention of Palm Coast and Bunnell.

“So there are discussions ongoing right now about how to change that formula,” Whitson said. “But for right now they’re making a contribution. And the question remains, is that the adequate, is that contribution adequate? And does it need to shift and change? And as the manager I’m going to say that’s an affirmative yes for me.”

The county’s share has grown in recent years: it was $72,500 in 2018. It is now 16 percent higher. But there’s a caveat. The figure has fluctuated. It was $53,000 in 2008. It rose sharply to $80,000 for several years after that, only to come down again to $65,000 in 2012, climbing back to $72,500 by 2015, where it remained for a few years.




Lifeguards during the high season start with 45 minutes of drills at 9 a.m., then set up their towers and begin surveillance at 10 a.m., until 5:15 p.m., when the lifeguards debrief. The typical lifeguard has a six-year “career” in Flagler Beach, starting at age 16 as they work through their high school and college years.

Gillen’s presentation was an opportunity for the commissioners and others to get re-familiarized with one of the services that define the city and keeps the county’s busiest beaches safe. Those beaches drew some 125,000 people to the beaches in the city in 2021, based on a very imprecise estimate, and likely an undercount. City Manager William Whitson said a more precise number is vital, and will be sought, whether through drones or students at the University of Florida, “because the beach is our economy and knowing how many beach visitors we have is vital.”

Lifeguards performed over 100 rescues last summer. “Guards made a terrific job of seeing the rescue,” Gillin said. A rescue is “any time a lifeguard has to enter the water to help somebody.” Of those, 84 were rip current rescues and 17 surf rescues. There were also some 1,300 “preventative actions,” which can be anything from a lifeguard blowing a whistle or shifting swimmers from one area of the surf to another. “Every time our number of preventive actions goes up, the number of rescues goes down,” Gillin said. “That means less time that a lifeguard has to go in the water because they prevented something from happening before it did happen.”

Gillin was able to show a dramatic picture captured by a woman–a patron at the Funky Pelikan, the restaurant overlooking the pier–who’d just bought a camera. (See the picture at the top of the article.) She was experimenting with it. Just then a swimmer was in distress, caught in a rip current. Lifeguards jumped to the rescue and, to Gillin’s pride, executed the perfect rescue in a “chain,” one of them anchoring himself in the surf while the others used the rip current to speed their way to the swimmer and pull off the save.




“I love that picture because it shows what a rip current looks like, in that picture, it’s so clearly defined,” he said in an interview this afternoon. He uses the picture in his lecture tours in schools, teaching kids about what to do in rip currents. (Swim with the current, don’t fight it: it lets up soon enough, and allows you to swim back outside of its pull.)

“Most of the causes of drownings we experience, it’s people either making bad decisions or just not knowing the right thing to do, the right safety precautions to take,” Gillin said. One key: more education in classrooms. So he spends time doing what he calls the “travelling junior lifeguard road show,” and annually tries to reach about 1,000 elementary and middle school students through the 45-minute presentation. In 2021, covid limited those shows to just four, reaching only 160 students. Flagler Beach initiated Project Save–an acronym for Safe Aquatics Video Education–thanks to a grant from the Florida Swimming Pool Association, that will turn 10 safety tips into 10 brief public service announcements that can also be used in the road show.

Gillin several years ago had the slogan of the United States lifeguard Association–Swim Near a Lifeguard–turned into a large, double-sided sign that attaches to the railing of the pier, flipping to “No Lifeguard on Duty” when the chairs are empty.

As for the lifeguard crew, it remains the rite of passage for many a Flagler Beach resident going back decades, and not just Flagler Beach. There are two classifications of lifeguards: seasonal lifeguards are hired at the end of April. They train until late May. Much of the training takes place at the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club. A lifeguard is required to be able to swim 500 meters in under 10 minutes.




“We’ve got people that come in and tell us how great they are, and oh yeah, I’m a great swimmer, I’ll rip through this, and they make two or three laps and–,” Gillin’s voice trails off, like the swimmer’s stamina. “That’s why we do it in the pool and not the ocean so we don’t get out beyond the pier and realize, maybe I’m not that good of a swimmer. But I really do appreciate their support for letting us in there,” he said of the Swim and Racquet Club. “They don’t charge us but they they support us. ”

The lifeguards work until September. Six lifeguards are year-round employees, part-time, and used at times like Christmas and Thanksgiving and other high-traffic, off-season periods. Full coverage of the beach begins on May 28.

Almost half the lifeguards have come up through the city’s junior lifeguard program and camps. Those weeklong junior lifeguard sessions cost $80 and run daily weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30. A financial aid program enables anyone to attend: inability to pay is “a non-issue there,” Gillin said, the city being keen on never turning anyone away if there’s a hardship. The Flagler Woman’s Club, one of whose more powerful members serves on the city commission, has donated annually–$200–and the Flagler Beach Rotary donates $1,000 for those scholarships. Kids (and adults) talk about Isabella Herrera, who runs the junior lifeguard program, as if she were the J.K. Rowling of the seas.

“I went through this program 30 years ago, and it has always been a success for Flagler Beach. It was something that I personally looked forward to every summer,” Mayor Suzie Johnston said. “It’s still a success.”

The Tom Gillin Presentation on Flagler Beach Ocean Rescue (2022):